Tim Storrier

Tim Storrier was born on 13 February 1949 in Sydney, Australia. He was educated at Sydney Church of England Grammar School, known as Shore, from 1959 to 1966, then began graphic design studies at the National Art School in Sydney in 1967. He left in 1969, before completing the program, to work as a graphic artist for the Australian Broadcasting Commission. He won the Sir John Sulman Prize that same year, 1968, for the painting Suzy 350, making him the youngest artist ever to win the prize at the time.

Storrier held his first solo exhibition at Australian Galleries in Melbourne in 1969 and went on to build a long exhibition history across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide, along with solo shows in London, Japan, and the United States. A 1983 solo exhibition in London led to three of his works being acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He won the Sulman Prize a second time in 1984 for The Burn, was appointed a Trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1989, and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1994 for services to art. Charles Sturt University later conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Arts. His best-known auction and prize work centers on fire, ash, and burnt or charred objects rendered with a trompe l'oeil precision, alongside recurring outback and desert landscapes.

He won the Archibald Prize in 2012 for The Histrionic Wayfarer (after Bosch), a self-portrait that withholds the sitter's face, and won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2017 for The Lunar Savant. As of 2026 he continues to exhibit regularly with Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane, is represented by Australian Galleries in Sydney and Melbourne and by Nanda\Hobbs in Sydney, and lives and works in Bowral, in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

Storrier's critical standing rests heavily on institutional recognition rather than a large body of published art criticism accessible in general research. His two Sulman Prize wins, twenty-six years apart, and his 2012 Archibald Prize win for a self-portrait that conceals the sitter's face, are the clearest markers of sustained peer and institutional regard across five decades. Commentary on his practice consistently returns to his technical precision in rendering fire, rope, and burnt material, and to a deliberate personal reticence. A 2025 review in InReview, marking his 76th year, noted that he was "still producing some of the most magnificent and mysterious paintings in Australian art."

Storrier's auction record is dominated by the Australian domestic market rather than international sale rooms. His recorded auction high is AUD 390,400 for The Fall (Incendiary Detritus), a work from 2000, sold by Bonhams in November 2013. Subsequent tracked sales, including works in the AUD 170,000 to 330,000 range in 2024, have not surpassed that 2013 result. His market is supported by a long track record of sell-through at auction and a consistent presence in major Australian institutional collections, but public sale volume remains modest compared with his prize record and museum standing.

Storrier's market signals differ from those of artists with international secondary-market depth. His strongest evidence of durability is institutional: repeated major prize wins, a Metropolitan Museum acquisition, and holdings across every major Australian state gallery. His auction supply is comparatively thin and concentrated within Australia, so any single result, including his 2013 record, should be read against a short and geographically narrow sales history rather than as part of a dense pricing trend. No catalogue raisonne has been identified, which places extra weight on gallery-verified provenance from his two current representing galleries.